We took the Mercedes.

Not the DB11. The Mercedes-AMG GLE 43. Obsidian Black. The practical one. The DB11 was Kent roads and V12 romance. The Mercedes was Wednesday night in London and a parking space that actually existed.

Emma came out of the apartment at seven-forty-five.

Black dress. Not trying to be noticed. Not needing to. It fitted her the way her yoga pants fitted her: like it had been designed around her body rather than for it. Red hair down, loose, the way I liked it, which she knew. Heels that added three inches and changed everything about how she moved. Shorter stride. Hips shifting. The whole geometry of her different.

She’d done something with her eyes. Makeup. Green made greener. I wasn’t supposed to notice. I noticed.

"You’re staring," she said.

"We haven’t left the car park."

"Exactly. Start the car, Danny."

I started the car.

Through Dulwich. Past the park. Over the river. Into Bermondsey. Her hand was on the centre console, her fingers drumming. I put my hand on hers. She turned her palm up, laced her fingers through mine, and then did the thing she did when we drove together: she took my hand and placed it on her thigh, just above the knee, where the fabric of the dress ended and her skin began, and she held it there.

Not suggestively. Possessively. The gesture of a woman who considered my hand her property during car journeys and who would return it to me when we arrived at the destination and not before.

"Good podcast?" I said.

"Good podcast. You were honest."

"You made me honest."

"My job is truth. Journalism is just the delivery method." She squeezed my hand on her thigh. "And tonight, stop thinking about Atlético."

"I’m not thinking about Atlético."

"Danny."

"I’m thinking about where the dress ends."

"It ends where your hand is. Which you already know. Eyes on the road."

The restaurant. Small Italian in Bermondsey. Candles. Wine list that wasn’t intimidating. A waiter who didn’t recognise me.

I got out first. Walked around to her side. Opened the door.

She stepped out and I put my hand on the small of her back as she stood, the gesture shifting to her hip as we walked to the entrance, my palm against the curve of the dress, the contact that I maintained in public because my hand on Emma’s hip was the acceptable version of what my hand wanted to do and what Emma knew my hand wanted to do and what would have to wait until we were not standing on a pavement in Bermondsey.

"Your hand is on my hip," she said.

"Yes."

"It’s been on my hip since the car."

"Yes."

"Is it going to stay on my hip all evening?"

"It might migrate."

"It can migrate when we get home."

We sat. She ordered pasta. I ordered fish. She drank wine. I drank water. The season and alcohol did not coexist.

She talked about the podcast. Which answers she’d keep. Which she’d cut. Whether the "are you happy" question was too personal.

"It’s your podcast," I said. "You decide."

"It’s too personal for a sports podcast. I’m keeping it anyway."

We talked about things that were not football. Her sister in Edinburgh, pregnant, unvisited since October. The book deal she hadn’t decided on. A film. A restaurant Lorraine had mentioned. The gym in the basement.

"My body has never felt this good," she said.

"I know."

"You know because you’re a sports scientist?"

"I know because I have eyes."

"And hands."

"And hands. Which are currently on the table behaving themselves."

"Noted. And appreciated. Temporarily."

She reached across the table and took my arm. Not my hand. My forearm. She traced her fingers along the inside of my wrist, up the tendon, across the muscle.

The absent, slow, deliberate gesture she made when she was comfortable and when the wine was working and when the candlelight was doing what candlelight did. She drew patterns on my skin the way she drew them on my chest in bed, the unconscious language of touch that she spoke fluently and that I was still learning.

"Danny."

"Mm."

"Thank you for doing the podcast."

"Thank you for asking the right questions."

"Thank you for wearing that shirt."

"I’m wearing a normal shirt."

"I know. You look good in normal shirts. It’s annoying." She traced a line from my wrist to the crook of my elbow. "Most men have to try. You just put on a white shirt and look like you belong on the cover of something. It’s deeply unfair."

"You’re the one in the black dress."

"The black dress is trying. The white shirt is not trying. The white shirt is worse."

I laughed. She laughed. The candlelight. The wine. The forearm. Two people in a restaurant who were having a conversation about shirts and dresses and who were actually having a conversation about wanting to leave the restaurant and go home.

We drove home through South London. Her hand on my thigh this time. My hand on the wheel. The Mercedes warm. The city dark.

At home, she kicked off the heels in the hallway. Three inches shorter. Her bare feet on the wooden floor. The sound of heels being abandoned by a woman who had tolerated them for the duration of the evening and who was now free.

She walked to the kitchen. Put the kettle on. The black dress in the kitchen. I followed her.

My hand found her hip again. The same hip. The same spot. But we were home now and the pavement rules did not apply. My hand slid from her hip to where it had wanted to be since she walked out of the apartment at seven-forty-five. The curve. The dress. The warmth beneath.

"There it is," she said, not turning around. "I was wondering how long the gentleman act would last."

"Four hours."

"A personal best."

"I was motivated by the dress."

"The dress is fabric."

"The dress is doing a lot of work for fabric."

She turned. Leaned against the counter. My hand stayed.

She looked up at me with the expression she wore when the evening was about to change direction, the expression that was part amusement and part invitation and part the quiet, certain knowledge that she was in complete control of whatever happened next and that whatever happened next was going to happen because she decided it would.

She kissed me. Not the quick kitchen kiss. She put her hands on the back of my neck, pulled me down to her, and kissed me properly. Open mouth. Her tongue finding mine. Slow. The kind of kiss that had a direction and a destination and no interest in stopping at either.

The kettle clicked off behind her. Neither of us looked.

"Tea," she said against my mouth.

"Forget the tea."

"Did you just say forget the tea?"

"Emma."

"Danny Walsh said forget the tea. I need to write this down."

"Stop talking."

She smiled against my mouth. The smile that was a decision.

I picked her up. Not dramatically. Not the cinematic lift. One arm under her legs, one arm behind her back, her weight in my arms, the dress riding up, her hand gripping my shoulder.

"You’re carrying me."

"Mm."

"To the bedroom?"

"Obviously."

She laughed into my neck. Warm breath. Her lips against my skin. Her fingers finding the collar of my shirt.

I carried her down the hallway. Her head against my shoulder. The apartment quiet except for the kettle, which had boiled and would remain untouched until morning.

I put her on the bed. She lay back. Red hair on the white pillow. The black dress against the white sheets. Green eyes looking up at me. The journalist was gone. The podcaster was gone. Just her. Just Emma.

I reached for the zip. She arched her back to let me find it. Small zip. Quiet sound. The fabric loosening around her shoulders.

I pulled the dress down. Slowly. Her collarbone first. Then her shoulders. The freckles across her chest that I had memorised in the Croydon flat and that had not changed and that I hoped would never change.

Her stomach, flat from the yoga, warm under my hand. Her hips, which I traced with my thumbs as the dress passed over them because her hips were the part of her that I could not look at without touching and could not touch without wanting more.

Past her knees. Off. I folded it and hung it on the bedroom door because dropping Emma’s clothes on the floor was a conversation I had lost three years ago.

She was lying on the bed looking at me and I stood there for a moment and just looked back. Not staring. Looking. At the body that the yoga and the Peloton and the twenty-seven years of being Emma Hartley had produced. At the woman who had asked me if I was happy and who was the answer to her own question.

"Come here," she said. Quietly. Her hand reaching for mine.

I went there.

Later. The apartment dark. The dress on the door. The heels somewhere in the hallway. The kettle cold and forgotten.

We lay there for a while. Not talking. Her head on my chest. My hand in her hair. The ceiling above us. The sound of South London outside the window, distant, muffled, belonging to a world that had nothing to do with the two people in this bed.

She fell asleep first. She always fell asleep first. Her breathing changed, the rhythm slowing, her body getting heavier against mine, the weight of a woman who trusted someone enough to fall asleep on them. I stayed awake. Watching the ceiling. Feeling her breathe.

Twenty minutes. I couldn’t sleep.

I shifted carefully. Sat up against the headboard. Reached for the laptop at the foot of the bed. Screen dimmed to its lowest. The Man United footage Sarah had sent.

Emma stirred. She didn’t wake up fully. She rolled towards me, eyes still closed, and pressed herself against my back. Her bare chest against my skin. The warmth of her. The weight of her.

Her arms came around my waist from behind and she pulled herself tight against me, her cheek between my shoulder blades, her breasts soft and heavy against my back, the fullness of her body wrapped around mine like she was holding onto something she refused to let the football take away.

Her fingers laced together across my stomach. She squeezed. Not gently. Tightly. The hug of a woman who was half-asleep and who was communicating, through pressure and warmth and the weight of her body, that she was here and that he was hers and that the laptop could have his eyes but she was keeping the rest of him.

I could feel her heartbeat against my spine. Slow. Steady. The rhythm of sleep returning. Her breath warm on my back.

I opened the footage. Mourinho’s shape. United’s defensive block. The analysis playing silently on the screen while the woman behind me breathed against my skin and held me like I was the only thing in the world that wasn’t football.

"Mourinho?" she murmured. Half a word. Half asleep.

"Yeah."

"Mm." Her arms tightened. Her lips pressed against my back. Not a kiss. Just contact. Just her mouth against my skin because her mouth wanted to be there.

"How long was I asleep?"

"Twenty minutes."

"And you’re already watching football." Not a question. Not a complaint. Just the tired, amused, completely unsurprised observation of a woman who had been loving a football manager for three years and who had accepted that the football came back eventually. It always came back.

"Can’t help it."

"I know." Her fingers traced a line across my stomach. Slow. Absent. "Watch your football, Danny Walsh. I’ll be here when you’re done."

She fell back asleep. Her arms still around me. Her chest still against my back. The heaviness of her. The warmth.

I could feel every breath she took, the rise and fall of her body against mine, and the laptop screen was showing Mourinho’s defensive shape but my mind was split between the 4-2-3-1 on the screen and the woman behind me whose heartbeat I could feel through my ribs.

Five days. United at Selhurst. Monday Night Football. Three days after that, Atlético.

The season hadn’t stopped. The season never stopped. But the woman holding me made it worth playing. And the weight of her against my back, the heaviness that was not heavy but was present and warm and real, was the thing that the season could not give me and that no trophy could replace.

The dress on the door. The footage on the screen. The woman in the bed.

The season continued. She stayed.

***

Thank you for 50 Golden Tickets.